English Education: Phonology Chapter 1

ARTICULATION AND ACOUSTICS

A. INTRODUCTION

Phonetics is concerned with describing speech. There are many different reasons which means that there are many kinds of phoneticians. For all these purposes, phoneticians need to find out what people are doing when they are talking and how the sounds of speech can be described.

B. SPEECH PRODUCTION

Speech Production describe about how speech sounds are made. Most of them are the result of movements of the tongue and the lips. these movements as gestures forming particular sounds. The gestures of the tongue and lips are made audible so that they can be heard and recognized. Making speech gestures audible involves pushing air out of the lungs while producing a noise in the throat or mouth. These basic noises are changed by the actions of the tongue and lips. Vocal fold happen when you talk, air from the lungs goes up the windpipe and into the larynx, at which point it must pass between two small muscular folds. Vocal folds are adjusted so that there is only a narrow passage between them, the airstream from the lungs will set them vibrating. Voiced is sounds produced when the vocal folds are vibrating. Voiceless is sound production when the vocal folds are apart.

The air passages above the larynx are known as the vocal tract. the air passages that make up the vocal tract may be divided into the oral tract, within the mouth and pharynx, and the nasal tract, within the nose. When the flap at the back of the mouth is lowered, air goes in and out through the nose. Articulators are the parts of the vocal tract that can be used to form sounds, such as the tongue and the lips.

The airstream process includes all the ways of pushing air out that provide the power for speech. For the moment, we have considered just the respiratory system, the lungs pushing out air, as the prime mover in this process. The phonation process is the name given to the actions of the vocal folds. Only two possibilities have been mentioned: voiced sounds in which the vocal folds are vibrating and voiceless sounds in which they are apart. It is important to understand the mechanisms of speech production because almost always speech is affected by hearing loss. Here is a basic overview of what takes place inside our bodies during the act of speech production.

The steady stream of air as we exhale is the energy source for speech production. Sounds which come from our mouth, or even our nose, are the result of interruptions of a stream of air moving from the lungs through:

trachea

larynx

pharynx

oral cavity

nasal cavity

The speech process itself consists of 3 structures:

1.) Structure of respiration

2.) Structure of resonation

3.) Structure of articulation

The first structure, structure of respiration, is the structure which is our power source to speak. The exhaled air is our energy source for speech. The organs involved in respiration are the trachea, rib cage, thorax, abdomen, diaphragm, and lungs.

How it works:

Our lungs first expand which creates negative pressure and makes air available for speaking. Then to actually speak, our lungs deflate and our rib cage contracts forcing the air out, up into our trachea.

The second structure, structure of resonation, is the structure which vibrates/makes sound. The organs invovled in this structure are the larnyx, and the vocal cords/folds. The vocal cords are part of the larynx. The vocal cords are the organ responsible for sound!

How it works:

When we talk, the vocal cords open and close rapidly. Air travels up the larynx, causing pressure to build up which causes the vocal cords to be pushed apart. A reduction of pressure causes the vocal cords to be pulled back together. This vibration (pushing/pulling of the vocal cords) is what is responsible for making sound (pitch and loudness). The larynx also acts as a gate between the lungs and mouth. It opens and closes to control the flow of air from the lungs. The larynx also closes so that food or liquid do not enter the trachea and lungs. Hence the saying, "It went down the wrong pipe."

The third structure, structure of articulation, is responsible for creating different sounds of speech. The joining together of speech organs for production of speech sounds is called articulation. The organs involved in this structure is everything from the lips up to the vocal cords. This includes the lips, teeth, tongue, alveolar ridge, soft/hard pallate, and jaw.

How it works:

By moving and shaping these articulators, it enables us to produce different speech sounds.

In brief, the air flow from the lungs provides energy for speech production, which in turn allows for the vocal cords to convert this energy into an audible noise. The articulators--through altering the shape of the vocal tract-transform the noise into detectable speech sounds.

C. SOUND WAVES

The way in which we hear a sound depends on its acoustic structure. Speech sounds, like other sounds, can differ from one another in three ways. They can be the same or different in pitch, loudness, and quality. Thus, two vowel sounds may have exactly the same pitch in the sense that they are said on the same note on the musical scale, and they may have the same loudness, yet still may differ in that one might be the vowel in bad and the other the vowel in bud. In the case of voiced sounds, the vibrating vocal folds chop up the stream of lung air so that pulses of relatively high pressure alternate with moments of lower pressure. Variations in air pressure in the form of sound waves move through the air somewhat like the ripples on a pond. When they reach the ear of a listener, they cause the eardrum to vibrate. A graph of a sound wave is very similar to a graph of the movements of the eardrum. the variations in air pressure that occur during Peter Ladefoged’s pronunciation of the word father.

This particular word took about 0.6 seconds to say. The lower part of the figure shows part of the first vowel in father. The major peaks in air pressure recur about every 0.01 seconds. This is because the vocal folds were vibrating approximately one hundred times a second, producing a pulse of air every hundredth of a second. The smaller variations in air pressure that occur within each period of one-hundredth of a second are due to the way air vibrates when the vocal tract has the particular shape required for this vowel. The sound [ f ] at the beginning of the word father has a low amplitude (it is not very loud, so the pressure fluctuation is not much different from zero) in comparison with the following vowel, and the variations in air pressure are smaller and more nearly random. There are no regular pulses because the vocal folds are not vibrating.

D. PLACES OF ARTICULATORY GESTURES

Articulators are the parts of the vocal tract that can be used to form sounds, such as the tongue and the lips The parts of the vocal tract that can be used to form sounds are called articulators. The articulators that form the lower surface of the vocal tract are highly mobile. They make the gestures required for speech by moving toward the articulators that form the upper surface. Try saying the word capital and note the major movements of your tongue and lips. You will find that the back of the tongue moves up to make contact with the roof of the mouth for the first sound and then comes down for the following vowel. The lips come together in the formation of p and then come apart again in the vowel. The tongue tip comes up for the t and again, for most people, for the final l. Behind the upper teeth is a small protuberance that you can feel with the tip of the tongue. This is called the alveolar ridge. You can also feel that the front part of the roof of the mouth is formed by a bony structure.

This is the part palate. The soft palate is a muscular flap that can be raised to press against the back wall of the pharynx and shut off the nasal tract, preventing air from going out through the nose. In this case, there is said to be a velic closure. At the lower end of the soft palate is a small appendage hanging down that is known as the uvula. The part of the vocal tract between the uvula and the larynx is the pharynx. Partly beneath the hard palate and partly beneath the soft palate, the back wall of the pharynx. The soft palate and the root, which is opposite the back wall of the pharynx. The epiglottis is attached to the lower part of the root of the tongue. Speech gestures using the lips are called labial articulations, those using the tip or blade of the tongue are called coronal articulations, and those using the back of the tongue are called dorsal articulations. A coronal consonant; in the middle is a labial consonant; and at the end a dorsal consonant. Check this by feeling that the tip or blade of your tongue is raised for the first (coronal) consonant, your lips close for the second (labial) consonant, and the back of your tongue is raised for the final (dorsal) consonant. The principal terms for the particular types of obstruction required in the description of English are as follows.

1. Bilabial

Bilabial consonants occur when you block/constrict airflow out of the mouth by bringing your lips together.

English contains the following three bilabial consonants:

/p/ as in “purse” and “rap“
/b/ as in “back” and “cab“
/m/ as in “mad” and “clam“

2. Labio-Dental

Labio-dental consonants occur when you block/constrict airflow by curling your lower lip back and raising it to touch your upper row of teeth.

English contains the following two labio-dental sounds:

/f/ as in “fro” and “calf“
/v/ as in “vine” and “have”

3. Dental

Dental consonants occur when you block/constrict airflow by placing your slimy tongue against your upper teeth.

English contains the following two labio-dental sounds:

/θ/ as is “thick” and “bath“
/ð/ as in “the” and “rather”

4. Alveolar

The alveolar ridge is where your teeth meet your gums.

You create Alveolar consonants when you raise your tongue to the alveolar ridge to block or constrict airflow.

The English alveolar consonants are as follows:

/n/ as in “no” and “man“
/t/ as in “tab” and “rat“
/d/ as in “dip” and “bad“
/s/ as in “suit” and “bus“
/z/ as in “zit” and “jazz“
/l/ as in “luck” and “fully”.

5. Post-Alveolar

When you retract your tongue back just a bit from the alveolar ridge, the sounds change enough to be recognized as distinct consonants.

So post-alveolar consonants are those that occur when the tongue blocks or constricts airflow at the point just beyond the alveolar ridge.

The post-alveolar english consonants are as follows:

/ʃ/ as in “shot” or “brash”
/ʒ/ as in “vision” or “measure”
/tʃ/ as in “chick” or “match”
/dʒ/ as in “jam” or “badge“

6. Palatal

The roof of your mouth is the hard palate. You may know it as “the place that burns like hell when I eat pizza that is too hot.”

You create Palatal consonants when you raise the tongue to this point and constrict airflow.

English has only one palatal consonant:

/j/ as in “yes” and “bayou”

7. Velar

Behind your hard palate you have the velum or soft palate. Unlike the bony hard palate in front of it, the this consists of soft, mucousy tissue.

You make Velar Consonants when you raise the back of your tongue to the velum to block or restrict airflow.

English has the following velar consonants:
/ŋ/ as in “going” and “uncle” (note that the ‘n sound’ in these words is NOT made at the alveolar ridge, which is why it is distinct from /n/).

/k/ as in “kite” and “back“
/g/ as in “good” and “bug“
/w/ as in “wet” and “howard”

8. Glottal

The glottis is actually two vocal folds (i.e. vocal cords). It acts as a sort of bottle cap to your windpipe.

Inhale and then hold your breath for a few seconds while keeping your mouth open. What you are actually doing to keep the air from expelling out of your lungs by closing your glottis.

Glottal consonants aren’t actually consonants; they just play consonant roles in the language. In English, the following things happen at the glottis:
/h/ as in “hi” and “Bahamas.” Say these words and notice how you’re not actually constricting or blocking airflow for this /h/ sound. You’re just exhaling a little bit harder than you would for a normal vowel sound in transition to the following vowel sound.
/?/ – This is actually the culprit behind many of the “silent syllables” we discussed in the first lesson. For example, in the phrase “wha(t) time is it?” the /t/ in “what” is dropped and the vowel sound before it is closed at the glottis.

The possible places of articulation form a continuum along the upper surface of the vocal tract; therefore the places listed above should be seen as arbritary (but conventional) divisions which can be modified if necessary through the use of additional categories, e.g., "interdental", "alveolo-palatal" or "prevelar". English exemplifies several places of articulation: bilabial [p], [b] and [m]; labiodental [f], [v] and [ɱ] (the "m" in "triumph" is labiodental, in harmony with the following [f] sound); dental [θ] and [ð]; alveolar [t], [d], [n], [s], [z], [ ɹ ], [l]; postalveolar [ʃ] and [ʒ]; palatal [j]; and velar [k],[ɡ] and [ ŋ].Uvular place of articulation is illustrated by the formal pronunciation of "r" in French or German (a uvular trill [R], or, often, a voiced fricative), as heard, for example, in classical singing. Pharyngeal place of articulation will probably take considerably more practise for you to perfect, partly because until you can produce and identify the other fricatives formed in the back of the mouth (i.e. [x], [ɣ], [ χ], [h] and [ ɦ]), you will not be confident that you are not forming any of these when you are attempting to produce pharyngeal friction. Friction in the pharynx is created by drawing the root of the tongue backwards, almost as if being strangled, though not quite as extreme. Once you can control the distinction between velar, uvular and gottal friction, the ability to regulate pharyngeal friction will develop with practise.

E. THE ORO-NASAL PROCESS

Consider the consonants at the ends of rang, ran, ram. When you say these consonants by themselves, note that the air is coming out through the nose. In the formation of these sounds in sequence, the point of articulatory closure moves forward, from velar in rang, through alveolar in ran, to bilabial in ram. In each case, the air is prevented from going out through the mouth but is able to go out through the nose because the soft palate, or velum, is lowered. In most speech, the soft palate is raised so that there is a velic closure. When it is lowered and there is an obstruction in the mouth, we say that there is a nasal consonant. Raising or lowering the velum controls the oro-nasal process, the distinguishing factor between oral and nasal sounds.

F. MANNERS OF ARTICULATION

1. Nasal

Nasal consonants are created when you completely block air flow through your mouth and let the air pass through your nose.
There are three nasal consonants in English.

/m/ – “mad” and “clam” – oral passage is blocked by closing the lips (bilabial).
/n/ – “no” and “man‘ – oral passage is blocked by pressing tongue tip against the alveolar ridge (alveolar).
/ŋ/ – “going” and “funk” – Oral passage is blocked by pressing the the back of your tongue against the soft palate (velar).

2. Stop

Like nasal consonants, stop consonants occur when the vocal tract is closed completely. But for stops the airflow is NOT redirected through the nose. Instead, the air quickly builds up pressure behind the articulators and then releases in a burst.

English contains the following stop consonants.

/p/ – purse and rap – oral passage is blocked by closing the lips (bilabial).
/b/ – “back” and “cab” – oral passage is blocked by closing the lips (bilabial).
/t/ – “tab” and “rat” – oral passage is blocked by pressing the tongue tip against the alveolar ridge (alveolar)
/d/ – “dip” and “bad” – oral passage is blocked by pressing the tongue tip against the alveolar ridge (alveolar)
/k/ – “kite” and “back” – block airflow with the back of the tongue against the soft palate (velar).
/g/ – “good” and “bug” – block airflow with the back of the tongue against the soft palate (velar).

3. Fricative

While nasal and stop consonants involve a complete blockage of the vocal tract, fricative sounds involve only a partial blockage of the vocal tract so that air has to be forced through a narrow channel.

For example, you create a /t/ stop consonant when you block airflow completely with your tongue against the alveolar ridge. But if you let up with the tongue a bit and let the air seep through, you make an /s/ fricative consonant.

The English fricative sounds are as follows:

/f/ – “fro” and “calf“- air is forced through the upper teeth and lower lip (labiodental)
/v/ – “vine” and “have” – air is forced through the upper teeth and lower lip (labiodental)
/θ/ – “thick” and “bath” – air is forced through upper teeth and tongue (dental)
/ð/ – “the” and “rather” – air is forced through upper teeth and tongue (dental)
/s/ – “suit” and “bus” – air is forced through tongue and alveolar ridge (alveolar)
/z/ – “zit” and “jazz” – air is forced through tongue and alveolar ridge (alveolar)
/ʃ/ – “shot” and “brash” – air is forced through the tongue and point just beyond alveolar ridge (post-alveolar)
/ʒ/ – “vision” and “measure” – air is forced through the tongue and point just beyond alveolar ridge (post-alveolar)
/h/ – “happy” and “hope” – actually /h/ isn’t a fricative. It’s technically not even a real consonant sound since there’s no constriction/obstruction of airflow.

4. Affricate

When stop consonants mix with fricative consonants, the result is an affricate consonant. Affricate consonants start as stop sounds with air building up behind an articulator which then releases through a narrow channel as a fricative (instead of a clean burst as stops do).

The English affricate sounds are:

/tʃ/ – “chick” and “match” – air is blocked with tongue just beyond the alveolar ridge (post-alveolar), then released as a fricative.
/dʒ/ – “jam” and “badge” – air is blocked with tongue just beyond the alveolar ridge (post-alveolar), then released as a fricative.

5. Approximant

Approximants are when two articulators come close together but not quite close enough to create air turbulence.

The resulting sound is more like a fast vowel than anything else. For example, the /w/ approximant is like a fast /u/ sound (say /u/ + /aɪ/ really fast and you get the word “why”). Notice how your tongue never actually comes in contact with the top of your mouth.

There are three English approximants:

/w/ – “wet” and “howard” – back of tongue raises to velum (but not too close!) and lips are rounded (velar)
/j/ – “yes” and “bayou” – tongue raises to hard palate (but not too close!) (palatal)
/ɹ/ – “right” and “roar” – tongue raises to hard palate (but not too close) (alveolar/post-alveolar)

6. Lateral

Lateral consonants are when the tongue blocks the the middle of your mouth so that air has to pass around the sides. You create this when you

There is one lateral consonant in English

/l/ – “luck”- place the tip of the tongue at the alveolar ridge (alveolar)

7. Additional Consonantal Gestures

In this preliminary chapter, it is not necessary to discuss all of the manners of articulation used in the various languages of the world—nor, for that matter, in English. But it might be useful to know the terms trill (sometimes called roll) and tap (sometimes called flap). Tongue-tip trills occur in some forms of Scottish English in words such as rye and raw. Taps, in which the tongue makes a single tap against the alveolar ridge, occur in the middle of a word such as pit in many forms of American English. This kind of combination of a stop immediately followed by a fricative is called an affricate, in this case a palato-alveolar (or post-alveolar) affricate. There is a voiceless affricate at the beginning and end of the word church. The corresponding voiced affricate occurs at the beginning and end of judge. the consonant at the beginning of the word sing is :

voiceless

alveolar

central

oral

fricative.

And the consonant at the end of sing is a voiced, velar, central, nasal, stop. On most occasions, it is not necessary to state all five points. Unless a specific statement to the contrary is made, consonants are usually presumed to be central, not lateral, and oral rather than nasal.

G.   THE WAVEFORMS OF CONSONANTS

At this stage, we will not go too deeply into the acoustics of consonants, simply noting a few distinctive points about their waveforms. The places of articulation are not obvious in any waveform, but the differences in some of the principal manners of articulation—stop, nasal, fricative, and approximant—are usually apparent. The waveform of the phrase My two boys know how to fish, labeled roughly in ordinary spelling. The lower part shows the same waveform with labels pointing out the different manners of articulation. The time scale at the bottom shows that this phrase took about two and a half seconds. The vowel is ended by the voiceless stop consonant at the beginning of two, for which there is a very short silence followed by a burst of noise as the stop closure is released. This burst is why the oral stop consonants are called “plosives” in the International Phonetic Alphabet chart. The vowel in two is followed by the voiced stop at the beginning of boys.

H.   THE ARTICULATION OF VOWEL SOUNDS

In the production of vowel sounds, the articulators do not come very close together, and the passage of the airstream is relatively unobstructed. We can describe vowel sounds roughly in terms of the position of the highest point of the tongue and the position of the lips. the articulatory position for the vowels in heed, hid, head, had, father, good, food. Of course, in saying these words, the tongue and lips are in ontinuous motion throughout the vowels, as we saw in the x-ray movie in demonstration.

I.   THE SOUNDS OF VOWELS

Vowels, like all sounds except the pure tone of a tuning fork, have complex structures. There is the pitch at which the vowel is actually spoken, which depends on the pulses being produced by the vibrating vocal folds; and, quite separate from this, there are overtone pitches that depend on the shape of the resonating cavities of the vocal tract. These overtone pitches give the vowel its distinctive quality. Normally, one cannot hear the separate overtones of a vowel as distinguishable pitches. The only sensation of pitch is the note on which the vowel is said, which depends on the rate of vibration of the vocal folds. But there are circumstances in which the overtones of each vowel can be heard. vowel sounds may be said on a variety of notes (voice pitches), but they are distinguished from one another by two characteristic vocal tract pitches associated with their overtones. One of them (actually the higher of the two) goes downward throughout most of the series heed, hid, head, had, hod, hawed, hood, who’d and corresponds roughly to the difference between front and back vowels. The other is low for vowels in which the tongue position is high and high for vowels in which the tongue position is low. It corresponds (inversely) to what we called vowel height in articulatory terms. These characteristic overtones are called the formants of the vowels, the one with the lower pitch (distinguishable in creaky voice) being called the first formant and the higher one (the one heard when whispering) the second formant.

J.   SUPRASEGMENTALS

Vowels and consonants can be thought of as the segments of which speech is composed. Superimposed on the syllables are other features known as suprasegmentals. These include variations in stress and pitch. Variations in length are also usually considered to be suprasegmental features, although they can affect single segments as well as whole syllables. Stress in English is produced by increased activity of the respiratory muscles, producing greater loudness, as well as by exaggeration of consonant and vowel properties, such as vowel height and stop aspiration, and exaggeration of pitch so that low pitches are lower and high pitches are higher. You can usually find where the stress occurs on a word by trying to tap with your finger in time with each syllable. It is much easier to tap on the stressed syllable. Frequency is a technical term for an acoustic property of a sound—namely, the number of complete repetitions (cycles) of a pattern of air pressure variation occurring in a second. The pitch of a sound is an auditory property that enables a listener to place it on a scale going from low to high, without considering its acoustic properties. In practice, when a speech sound goes up in frequency, it also goes up in pitch. The pitch pattern in a sentence is known as the intonation. Listen to the intonation (the variations in the pitch of the voice) when someone says the sentence This is my father.

References:
http://www.phon.ox.ac.uk/jcoleman/PLACE.htm
https://www.mimicmethod.com/ft101/place-of-articulation/